Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky
NASHVILLE -- Vince Young had thrown his second interception and his body language wasn't good. He sat off alone. And when it came time for the offense to go back on the field, he was not with the other 10 Titans.
His coach motioned for him to get in there, and finally, he did. To significant boos.
Four plays later, awkwardly dragged down by linebacker Daryl Smith, Young suffered a sprained left knee and was finished for the day.
Kerry Collins engineered a touchdown drive and the Titans held on for a 17-10 win over the Jaguars.
The Titans come out of it with a starting quarterback whose status is in doubt, in more ways than one.
Updates on the knee will come when Jeff Fisher meets the press Monday and again when the Titans begin practicing to get ready for Cincinnati on Wednesday. Young won't address anything until Wednesday, and he'll have his story straight by then for sure.
The facts are disputable, but the cover story, if that's what it is, is pretty well built. Fisher said after the game any confusion as to whether Young would return to play was over his hamstring strain that got him added to the injury report on Friday.
"He said, 'It's tight,'" and I said, 'if it's tight, we'll go with Kerry and try to talk him back into is and he felt good," Fisher said.
But in a broader sense, the issue is Young's ability to work his way through situations where he is upset -- with himself, with his coach, with his team, and yes, even with booing fans.
As a rookie, Young held it against Fisher when the coach stuck to the team rules and had a team flight to Philadelphia leave without the quarterback when he was late for the flight.
He misplaced the anger from that situation, declining to admit he was, in fact, at fault.
And today, somehow, the bad interception to rookie defensive lineman Derrick Harvey and the cascading boos that followed it, those seemed like someone else's fault too.
Give Young credit, he's got an amazing ability to externalize. His mentor and predecessor as Titans quarterback, Steve McNair, took the blame for everything. (Unfortunately, their tenure with the Titans did not overlap.) Young is completely the opposite, and rarely, without major prodding, utters "my bad."
The Titans' way is to build a cocoon around their guy. They believe they must always have his back all the way, never revealing so much as slight doubt publicly. The system worked well with McNair because he was so incredibly hard on himself. But when the quarterback carries himself as Young has -- without even a small dose of self-criticism, with a constant defensive tone, or, like today, without a comment at all -- it's not such an attractive package.
Fisher insisted there is nothing controversial here at all.
But just saying so doesn't make it so. Only so much can be swept under the rug until a speed bump forms. Imagine another player declining to go back on the field after a bad series.
Young has accountability issues that are overdue to be resolved. And to this point the Titans' delicate handling of him sure doesn't look like it's helping him sort things out.
Kuharsky joined ESPN.com in 2008 after 12 years covering the Oilers/Titans and the NFL for The (Nashville) Tennessean. The New Jersey native and Columbia graduate lives in Nashville with his wife.
